I'm mostly shooting Av with auto iso and use exposure compensation a lot - I overexpose if I know my subject is darker than the scene, or I'm deliberately underexposing to gain speed.

Tv mode doesn't seem to be popular around here, but I use it for action shots with my 70-300L - the smaller aperture is good here, because it cannot go lower than f4 resulting in a too thin depth of field. With my setting and auto-iso, at least 1/500s is guaranteed, but if the ambient light is better the iq gets better without my intervention.

Manual 100% of the time. I control what the pictures look like. Be it good or bad. The camera doesnt know what i want the outcome to be. So i tell it. I think its a little lazy to let the camera do the work. But thats just me. Ill take a blank canvas over paint by number any day!

Full Auto With as much as I paid for my 5D3, I might as well get my money's worth by letting the camera do the thinking for me

I think my soul is slightly wounded...

I have always been a huge fan of AV mode - with manual ISO. Auto ISO doesn't appeal to me on this type of camera, but I can see its uses in some situations. Since purchasing the 5D3 I've set up the C1-C3 modes like this:

C1 - standard single shot, ISO 100, AV mode (portraits in good light)C2 - high speed burst, AI servo, ISO 400, AV mode (sports)C3 - silent shutter, single shot, ISO 3200, AV mode (weddings or discrete indoor functions). I suppose this would be the best candidate for auto-ISO if I were to go that way.

The camera doesn't know me, but after shooting for a while I know my camera. If I look at a scene, I am pretty much able to predict how the camera will measure and if Av needs exposure correction - so basically, it's assisted manual mode.

Full Auto With as much as I paid for my 5D3, I might as well get my money's worth by letting the camera do the thinking for me

I think my soul is slightly wounded...

I have always been a huge fan of AV mode - with manual ISO. Auto ISO doesn't appeal to me on this type of camera, but I can see its uses in some situations. Since purchasing the 5D3 I've set up the C1-C3 modes like this:

C1 - standard single shot, ISO 100, AV mode (portraits in good light)C2 - high speed burst, AI servo, ISO 400, AV mode (sports)C3 - silent shutter, single shot, ISO 3200, AV mode (weddings or discrete indoor functions). I suppose this would be the best candidate for auto-ISO if I were to go that way.

Actually I found auto ISO to work really well. AV @2.8 and I had really good shots from 100 to 12800. I was amazed at how well the photos looked at high ISO.

Full Auto With as much as I paid for my 5D3, I might as well get my money's worth by letting the camera do the thinking for me

I think my soul is slightly wounded...

I have always been a huge fan of AV mode - with manual ISO. Auto ISO doesn't appeal to me on this type of camera, but I can see its uses in some situations. Since purchasing the 5D3 I've set up the C1-C3 modes like this:

C1 - standard single shot, ISO 100, AV mode (portraits in good light)C2 - high speed burst, AI servo, ISO 400, AV mode (sports)C3 - silent shutter, single shot, ISO 3200, AV mode (weddings or discrete indoor functions). I suppose this would be the best candidate for auto-ISO if I were to go that way.

Actually I found auto ISO to work really well. AV @2.8 and I had really good shots from 100 to 12800. I was amazed at how well the photos looked at high ISO.

I use Autoiso on the 1D4 and it is superb. My exposure problems are limited to EC adjustments

For weddings, I use full manual exclusively. I've been tempted to use aperture priority a few times outdoors, in wildly varying light, but my manual shooting is getting better as I learn to constantly monitor the meter and histograms.

I'm not saying the "semi-automatic" modes aren't good or that they shouldn't be used, but in most wedding photography (in my experience) you need absolute control over the camera - any guessing the camera has to do is an opportunity for the camera to get it wrong. If you're in a setting where you can trust the automatic settings, or at least you can check on the automatic settings and adjust them and take the shot again, then they are fantastic to use. If you're in a situation where the photo has to be as good as possible the first time with no time to retry, then learning to wield the camera in full manual is the way to go.

I haven't even used the Auto ISO feature on the 5D3 yet. I know I can restrict it to a specific range of values, but I think that I should be able to set the aperture, shutter speed, ISO, focus, framing, and composition at the same time. It's exhausting and sometimes daunting, but when it's done right, it's the best way to consistently get great photos.

I'm with you. And I don't know why people complain about the auto ISO so much, because I don't want it at all, so I don't care how it works. It was terrible when one time a new camera (Nikon D90) kept changing the ISO in the manual mode. I hate that.

Like you said, using manual exposure can actually make me work faster. Imagine that I am taking promo photos of classes in a school (this morning's assignment). I set my exposure, and take a picture of the class, and then turn to take a picture of the teacher who is backed by a large window.

With any auto setting, I'd get blackness then and scurry for 15 seconds trying to fix things up with exposure compensation and all that.

With manual I get the perfect shot without changing anything, and the extra brightness behind the teacher just adds a natural backlit effect and hair halo that I couldn't have done better even with all my lights and flashes.

I only use auto modes once in a rare while in controlled lighting settings (ha, ha, this is the exact opposite of intuition) that vary distinctly from one another. Any wild or difficult lighting environment calls for manual exposure all the way, and definitely no auto ISO.